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16 April 2014

The Electoral Commission (EC) has increased the
number of polling stations from 26,000 to 35,000 as part of its
preparations for the smooth conduct of district level elections this
year.

With the procurement of more biometric verification devices (BVDs), the
EC also plans to put two BVDs at the disposal of each polling station
during the upcoming elections scheduled to be held by the end of the
year.

A Deputy Chairman of the EC in charge of Finance and Administration, Ms
Georgina Opoku Amankwaa, who made this known in Accra yesterday, said
the elections would be conducted simultaneously for all the 6,156
electoral areas across the country.

The EC had received public backlash for the piecemeal (or what some
critics described as the ‘tot-tot’) manner in which it conducted the
last district level elections in 2010.

But Ms Amankwaa assured the nation at a consultative forum in Accra
that the experience belonged to history, as she was upbeat that the EC
would post a better performance this year.

Voters register to open

The Deputy EC Chairman said the voters register would be opened in June
this year for what she described as a limited registration exercise
purposely meant for people who had attained the age of 18 since the last
registration exercise in 2012 and others above 18 who, for one reason
or another, could not register in 2012.

She said the EC had a system to detect registered voters who would
attempt to register again and warned that offenders would be drastically
dealt with.

“The EC has not been biting in the previous time but this time it will
bite. If you are found to have double-registered, you’ll be very sorry,”
she said.

Ms Amankwaa said the conduct of the district level elections was more
difficult than that of the presidential and parliamentary elections
because of the number of candidates involved and appealed to all
Ghanaians to help make it a success.

Essence of forum

The consultative forum was the last of a series of 10 regional fora
organised by the EC to seek the input of stakeholders in the electoral
system for a review of the Public Elections Regulations, 2012 (CI 75) to
make it more feasible for the conduct of the district level elections.

Although the law is barely two years old, the need for its review is
informed by Section 47 of the regulation which provides thus: “These
regulations apply to presidential and parliamentary elections and with
the necessary modifications to other public elections that the
Commission may by constitutional instrument prescribe.”

The forum was also in line with a project by the EC, dubbed: “Deepening
public confidence in Ghana’s elections”, as the EC prepares for the
district level elections.